I’ve actually had the exact opposite happen: my ShowHN posts got nowhere, but the product itself became successful. I’m sure that the opposite is also true as well, but figured folks needed to hear that, just because your ShowHN post got nowhere, doesn’t mean there’s not a market fit for what you’re building. It just might not be interesting enough for the HN crowd, or you don’t have any name-recognition.
Even if the type of person who browses HN religiously is your exact target market, just posting at a bad time or being unlucky enough to post right before other relevant big news comes out is enough to get buried.
My counter-example of a "successful" post with a failed product.
I did more than a couple of Show HNs. The most upvoted one (49 upvotes) was one of the first ones with a mostly crappy product [0].
I was just starting to learn to code, it was an ugly, amateurish CRUD, lacking a lot of basic features.
Unsurprisingly, it went no where. Not because of the software quality, but the product itself.
It was an idea of organizing sales prospects info based on my own experience as a salesperson and the way I organized myself using Excel sheets. It was a neat idea and I believe that's why it was upvoted.
I even had one of those "why should I use this product if I can do it myself with excel?" comments [1]. Turned out this one was right, as it was an excel sheet turned - unnecessarily - into a web app.
The evidence is that I got only one or two signups, who never came back after the first visit.
It could be the way it's presented too. What does "headless Chrome as a service" even mean?
When I look at the Github link, I actually understand what it does: "Severless Chrome on your own infrastructure. Each session gets its own clean Chrome context for total isolation. After the session is complete Chrome is shutdown. You can also think of it like a database connection where your app connects to browserless, runs some work, and gets results back."
But it's fair. Titles are hard and HN shuns clickbait.
Heh. I recall that ShowHN actually... and while I have no need for it, when it was posted I thought "Neat. Someone will want that"
--
So, I guess it would be a good-faith action to simply encourage others who are ShowingHN something and tell them what you think, regardless of that product being something you want/need.
I try to do this frequently, actually, I try things out and then give feedback.
On several I've noticed simple typos that can be fixed, and in those cases it is typically where you just need fresh eyes to see something to have it stand-out - because the creators stare at it constantly and thus small things can blind them.
The first comment on that thread is a typical funny HN comment: “if you’re a Linux user and do x, y, z and connect the flux capacitor to the warp drive you can emulate Dropbox no problem”
I reference this when I talk about HackerNews in general. I remember reading this post back then. I remember them slowly growing huge. It's kind of funny to look back and think I knew about their project from the very beginning.
The product’s now delivering family photos in the mail for hundreds of grandparents every month. They might not be making millions of dollars yet, but they are making some money and doing lots of good in the world by helping with elder loneliness. That’s a success to me.
Contentful is the first developer-oriented CMS that actually appeals to businesses and marketers. I've had more than a few nightmares with the Adobe Marketing Cloud but most big businesses just automatically gravitate to those kind of products. Developers always want simple, easy to deploy and configure and something API-driven. Business wants drag and drop, dashboards, analytics and workflows and other nonsense. Contentful is the first CMS I've seen that is extremely developer-friendly, but is pretty enough to give the business folks confidence. You guys just need more of a spiel on your landing page to appeal to the marketers.
I'm interested in how Quiver is going? It looks like this is your main revenue stream? I've looked at it before and been unsure what it does, and trying it now it doesn't seem to work for us (no requests ever reach quiver with the GraphQLQuiverCloudBackend). Is it production ready, or is it in preview at the moment?
Edit: so the issue was that we had an extraneous trailing comma, which was turning a string (deprecation reason) into a 1-element tuple, which was then failing an assertion in the AST serialisation within graphql-core, however this assertion was being silenced by one of the backends - either the decider or the Quiver backend.
I announced the creation of a class here on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5862102 -- This was a Show HN, but then it was edited for some reason; link is dead now, but it was a blog post describing the class and had a payment link), which went on to sell out in the first day, then eventually I posted on HN that I wanted to sell it ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14933206 ), and was acquired because of the post.
My project didn't get much attention on Show HN (or anywhere else), but I sent a cold email to Mark Cuban and offered to invest pretty quickly. So don't get too disheartened if your project gets a tepid response.
By most definitions we've pivoted from tech startup to "profitable small tech business", staying at 4-6 people. We're no dropbox, but at a solid cohort paying customers for our reasonably well-loved consumer product we've turned into a successful (by our personal definitions) company, if not a successful startup.
Show HN traffic can definitely have an impact but I'd also urge keeping in mind the causation vs correlation fallacy.
Also the Show HN posts are not as organic as they appear, in other words I don't believe you just prepend Show HN to a post and see it go boom...they won't admit it but there is more happening behind the scene.
[+] [-] mrskitch|7 years ago|reply
For those who are curious the product is browserless.io. Rev chart is here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/browserless/revenue
EDIT: here’s my ShowHN post for posterity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15722617
[+] [-] pc86|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soneca|7 years ago|reply
I did more than a couple of Show HNs. The most upvoted one (49 upvotes) was one of the first ones with a mostly crappy product [0].
I was just starting to learn to code, it was an ugly, amateurish CRUD, lacking a lot of basic features.
Unsurprisingly, it went no where. Not because of the software quality, but the product itself.
It was an idea of organizing sales prospects info based on my own experience as a salesperson and the way I organized myself using Excel sheets. It was a neat idea and I believe that's why it was upvoted.
I even had one of those "why should I use this product if I can do it myself with excel?" comments [1]. Turned out this one was right, as it was an excel sheet turned - unnecessarily - into a web app.
The evidence is that I got only one or two signups, who never came back after the first visit.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7768857
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769115
[+] [-] muzani|7 years ago|reply
When I look at the Github link, I actually understand what it does: "Severless Chrome on your own infrastructure. Each session gets its own clean Chrome context for total isolation. After the session is complete Chrome is shutdown. You can also think of it like a database connection where your app connects to browserless, runs some work, and gets results back."
But it's fair. Titles are hard and HN shuns clickbait.
[+] [-] samstave|7 years ago|reply
--
So, I guess it would be a good-faith action to simply encourage others who are ShowingHN something and tell them what you think, regardless of that product being something you want/need.
I try to do this frequently, actually, I try things out and then give feedback.
On several I've noticed simple typos that can be fixed, and in those cases it is typically where you just need fresh eyes to see something to have it stand-out - because the creators stare at it constantly and thus small things can blind them.
[+] [-] browsercoin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfaat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moodles|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssijak|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mulletbum|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caseyf|7 years ago|reply
May 7, 2012 "Gumroad raises $7 million from KPCB" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3939871
[+] [-] andygcook|7 years ago|reply
The product’s now delivering family photos in the mail for hundreds of grandparents every month. They might not be making millions of dollars yet, but they are making some money and doing lots of good in the world by helping with elder loneliness. That’s a success to me.
[+] [-] dvdhsu|7 years ago|reply
We did a Show HN a year ago: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515494). Then we did YC, raised a bit of money (almost entirely off our HN traction), and launched around a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17725966). Now we're profitable!
[+] [-] realityking|7 years ago|reply
It's now a series C startup with over 200 employees and customers like Spotify, WeWork, Samsung, Nike, Jack in the Box, The British Museum
(I work there)
[+] [-] tootie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] childintime|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GFischer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1stcity3rdcoast|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bemmu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cowpewter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stef25|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faitswulff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmchu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsstoner|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaxtellerSoA|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syrusakbary|7 years ago|reply
I started working on it almost 3 years ago. Now about 5.000 companies all over the globe are using it including Yelp, Reddit & Mozilla.
We're profitable and trying to expand our niche (GraphQL in Python) to more markets. Thinking on applying to YC in not a very far future :)
[+] [-] danpalmer|7 years ago|reply
Edit: so the issue was that we had an extraneous trailing comma, which was turning a string (deprecation reason) into a 1-element tuple, which was then failing an assertion in the AST serialisation within graphql-core, however this assertion was being silenced by one of the backends - either the decider or the Quiver backend.
[+] [-] llililliliil|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parsadotsh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfee|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zweicoder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidjohnstone|7 years ago|reply
https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453967
[+] [-] dvirsky|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edent|7 years ago|reply
That lead to https://unicodepowersymbol.com/
Not a start-up, but a successful project :-)
[+] [-] fbomb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtbcb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martin-adams|7 years ago|reply
But that doesn't mean you wont still be successful: https://convertkit.baremetrics.com/
[+] [-] daeken|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romanhn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hwoolery|7 years ago|reply
Orignal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14459876
[+] [-] ss2003|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keerthiko|7 years ago|reply
By most definitions we've pivoted from tech startup to "profitable small tech business", staying at 4-6 people. We're no dropbox, but at a solid cohort paying customers for our reasonably well-loved consumer product we've turned into a successful (by our personal definitions) company, if not a successful startup.
[+] [-] Edmond|7 years ago|reply
Also the Show HN posts are not as organic as they appear, in other words I don't believe you just prepend Show HN to a post and see it go boom...they won't admit it but there is more happening behind the scene.
[+] [-] revazquez|7 years ago|reply